wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (08/22/90)
> Well, if you have been advertising I have not seen your ads. > In most of the ads I have seen, and have gotten bingo card info on, > Forth systems start near $150 and go up. My impression is that your > prices are an exception. I can't afford to advertise, at the low prices I charge. No kidding; the cheapest advertising vehicle is Forth Dimensions, at a few hundred dollars per issue. At $50 (the price of my Forthmacs product for Atari ST and Macintosh), I make about $30, which isn't very good money considering the time it takes to fill the order. I would have to sell 10 copies from the ad in order to just break even. I tried it once and the response wasn't *nearly* that good. Advertising rates in Sun-related magazines are in the $10,000 range. I make about $150 on a sale of Sun Forth. Think it's worthwhile advertising? There are over 100,000 Suns in the world, but how many Sun users want to use Forth? Not many. The vendors of inexpensive Forth systems have either a) Gone out of business b) or, run "shoestring" businesses like me, and can't afford to advertise One can easily make more money from a single consulting job than I have made from 5 years worth of sales of ST and Macintosh Forthmacs and C Forth 83. > Now Jax will surely tell us about how there is a $K billion market for > Forth in Embedded Systems and Real-Time Control. But the profitable way to participate in that market is not by selling "shrink-wrapped" Forth language systems, but by selling boards and consulting services and problem solutions. > I think this last point (which I moved down from further up in your original > message) is important. If I were buying a Forth system to support or > develop a commerical venture, I would probably buy a commercial Forth > system just for the piece of mind, and I would probably have the cash to > afford it. As a hobbyist I can't afford that, and I don't need or want > it anyway. A very important point indeed! What you have basically hit on is the fact that a vendor can't make enough money selling to hobbyists for it to be worthwhile, unless there are other motivations (like in my case, I get a kick out of selling to hobbyists. My wife frequently urges me to stop though, because it really isn't worth the time). Mitch
dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips) (08/24/90)
In <9008230646.AA00497@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes: > I can't afford to advertise, at the low prices I charge. > No kidding; the cheapest advertising vehicle is Forth Dimensions, at > a few hundred dollars per issue. At $50 (the price of my Forthmacs > product for Atari ST and Macintosh), I make about $30, which isn't very > good money considering the time it takes to fill the order. I would > have to sell 10 copies from the ad in order to just break even. I tried > it once and the response wasn't *nearly* that good. I was afraid you would say that. Hmm, I wonder if we couldn't get FD to sponsor one of those popular "grab bag" type pages, or two. The kind where they put 9 small boxes per page. Not a whole lot of room, but it should be cheap. I only every see ONE Forth system in other magazines, even in the cheap sections. Just a thought. > The vendors of inexpensive Forth systems have either > a) Gone out of business > b) or, run "shoestring" businesses like me, and can't afford to advertise > So, how does one find out about the shoe-strings if they don't advertise? If FIG is supposed to be promoting Forth, and FD is FIG's publication... Maybe the "Reference" section could contain a list of Forth vendors. Just names, addresses and phone numbers. Could require "small fee" maybe? Just another idea. > > I think this last point (which I moved down from further up in your original > > message) is important. If I were buying a Forth system to support or > > develop a commerical venture, I would probably buy a commercial Forth > > system just for the piece of mind, and I would probably have the cash to > > afford it. As a hobbyist I can't afford that, and I don't need or want > > it anyway. > > A very important point indeed! > > What you have basically hit on is the fact that a vendor can't make > enough money selling to hobbyists for it to be worthwhile, unless there > are other motivations (like in my case, I get a kick out of selling to > hobbyists. My wife frequently urges me to stop though, because it really > isn't worth the time). My analogy with Power-C from Mix Software (PC C compiler for $20. Library source for $10) must be feasible because of the huge client base difference. They can afford to advertise in Computer Shopper, etc. I don't have any answer for this, but it seems like a Catch-22. If you had the clients you could afford to advertise, but you can't afford to advertise until you have the clients. Sigh. -Doug --- Preferred: ( dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us OR ...!{sei,pitt}!willett!dwp ) Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [last resort: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu] --- Preferred: ( dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us OR ...!{sei,pitt}!willett!dwp ) Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [last resort: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]
wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (08/24/90)
> seems like a Catch-22. If you had the clients you could afford to > advertise, but you can't afford to advertise until you have the clients. It's not really a Catch-22; investment in a business will allow you to avertise in anticipation of future profits. The problem is that the expected return is too low. I can't afford to advertise because the total market for Forth products is small. I could afford to advertise my higher priced items, such as my ROM monitor product for SPARC-based computers. This sort of reinforces the perception of high-priced commercial Forth products; you see advertisements for them because the expected return on #units times unit-price will pay for the advertising, which is usually not true for low-priced Forth products. In all honesty, I should admit that one reason that I don't advertise is because I can't really handle more business right now in the few hours per week that I have to devote to Bradley Forthware. But even so, I probably wouldn't advertise my low-priced items through traditional publication channels. Mitch
dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips) (08/29/90)
In <9008241608.AA00381@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes:
MB> It's not really a Catch-22; investment in a business will allow you to
MB> avertise in anticipation of future profits.
MB> The problem is that the expected return is too low. I can't afford to
MB> advertise because the total market for Forth products is small.
So are you claiming that it is just small now, or that it will never get
larger? (I realize this is a pretty open ended question...)
MB> This sort of reinforces the perception of high-priced commercial Forth
MB> products; you see advertisements for them because the expected return
MB> on #units times unit-price will pay for the advertising, which is usually
MB> not true for low-priced Forth products.
Which leads us back to 'Do Re Mi...'. One question I haven't seen a lot of
discussion about is what size of community "there should be". I suppose
we can't really answer that one until we decide just what is the proper
domain for Forth. But, maybe, the answers are interdependant.
-Doug
---
Preferred: ( dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us OR ...!{sei,pitt}!willett!dwp )
Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [last resort: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) (08/30/90)
> So are you claiming that [the market for Forth systems] is just small now, > or that it will never get larger? I am claiming that no individual Forth system vendor is anywhere near large enough to dramatically affect the total size of the Forth marketplace by advertising. It is possible for a very large company to dramatically and unilaterally affect the size of a marketplace, but rarely can a small company do it. In the global marketplace, it is very hard to "get a ball rolling". There appear to be strong positive feedbacks in the economy (Sci. Amer., Feb. 90 I think). Applying this concept to a different topic, let's consider the issue of prefix/postfix defining words. We all seem to agree that it would be "better" to separate the creation of a forth "object" (colon definition, variable, etc) from giving it a name. We could design a new language that fixed this problem and other problems with Forth. Would it succeed? Almost certainly not. Hundreds or even thousands of computer languages have been designed and implmented, and only 10 or 20 have more than a handful of users. By this criterion, Forth has been wildly successful. It has "made the cut" in this sense. It isn't in the "top tier" with C and FORTRAN and COBOL and perhaps LISP , but it actively used by a not-insignificant number of people. A few people even eke out a meager existence supporting it. Viewed in this light, I think that trying to design a new Forth-like language is an utter waste of time. From a practical standpoint, we should be trying to nurture Forth, patching over its faults as best as we can. That is what I feel that I am helping to do with my participation in the ANS Forth effort. Aha! There you have it. I have just written my manifesto! Forth won't burst into the limelight, but maybe its ultimate demise (for all things die) can be postponed, and perhaps the market will even grow by a modest amount. Dare we hope for a factor of 2? Mitch